The Vault Regulars

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

An early trip into Manchester and then a tram to Bury to meet walkers from the LDWA, and Martin who had put the walk together.
As it turned out there was only 5 of us. Two Johns, Les, Martin and I. The tortoises.
It was a glorious day, cloudless and sunny.
Bury is a small town centre and within a few minutes we were crossing the Irwell by a large stone arched bridge. Once part of the now defunct railway between Bury and Holcombe Brook.

After a very short break and a team photo the old line was left in favour of following Kiklees Brook.
It was pleasant walking and not much meandering as Martin was guessing the route well.

Our path was heading in the direction of Tower Farm but our way was blocked by some excavating work and pathway diversions. Not wanting to cause any conflict we diverted and to be honest it was more exciting. Thankfully it hadn't rained for a few days and the river banks were dry. Decending what could have been quite a laughable slide into the water down a steep embankment we all made it across without wet feet.

Our diversion gave us good views across the reservoirs and the old Tottington aqueduct. Skirting the unique Tower Farm we crossed the railway line again and headed passed the golf course towards the A676 at Hawkshaw.
We almost did a meander but again Martin got the right track.

Those familiar with LDWA walks will now find the ground familiar as it is part of the 2 crosses walk. For me it was all new and very nice.

Entering Redisher wood was very interesting. There is obviously much archeology from the days of the industrial revolution and probably before. By 1893 in this vale was a bleach works owned by the Ainsworth family, a cotton mill and a corn mill, they all used the water from Holcombe Brook for power. A coal adit can be found and also quarrying for Cinder Hill came from this area.

All too soon we were back in civilisation and just as it happend we spotted a very nice Ferguson 35 in Gold and Grey livery. The 35 left the factory in these colours.

Then right by the path was The Hare and Hounds pub at Holcombe Brook. For some reason we all fell in.
There was something like 20 beers on and the food looked very good.
Post lunch Martin and i bode farwell to the other 3 and made our way back to the railway track.

This is where the Hare in the title bar makes an apperance. The 7km route back to Bury was done in 1hr 15 minutes and that was with a few stops for photographs.

Bury Centre with the monument to Robert Peel.

We then caught the metro back to Manchester just as the schools were finishing. That was an interesting experience.
It had been a fine day out. Thanks everyone.

Maps thanks to Martin.

Note.
This post was my first attempt at posting using Bloggeroid App for android phones. Text wise it is a fine bit of kit and very easy to use. It saves your blog post as a draft and is easily retrievable for editing and further writing. You can save it as many times as you like.
It is the easiest bit of software i have used.

However, the images are a different matter. All the images were taken with the Samsung S3 and stored in the gallery.
To add an image to the blog was easy and there was no restriction to how many i wanted to add.
But it wouldn’t allow me to insert them where i wanted and so i had to edit it on my desk top to get the images in the right place. Thats a pain, but not dissimilar to other blogger type apps.

As a first attempt i am pleased and maybe i still have a lot to learn.

Update;- You can insert images in the right place as long as you insert them as you go and don’t leave them until the end. Obviously you need to keep your image size down as small as possible and keep the numbers of images you want to insert low too. Otherwise once you click publish it will take ages to finish and quite possibly fail to load depending on the signal you have and where you are in the world.

All i can say Martin is give Bloggeroid a go. If you don’t like it then you can un-install it.I think you will find it ok though. If i find it easy then i’m sure you will. There are not that many menu’s just a simple post writer and image layer.